When talking about climate change, “carbon storage” is always presented as one of the practical solutions. Instead of talking about reducing emissions, which may not be achieved by all countries in their quest to increase production, the alternative way is to store and recycle the emitted carbon.
Carbon storage is a process during which carbon dioxide is isolated and buried in the ground, after separating the gas in tanks when it is emitted from power plants, and this aims to mitigate the increase in global temperature that threatens the future of human life on Earth.
Recently, Denmark and Belgium concluded a deal, the first of its kind among the world’s countries, to transport and store carbon in the North Sea.
According to a report by Offshore Energy on September 30, the agreement will require the transfer of carbon from Belgium to store it in repositories 1,800 meters below the sea floor in the Danish North Sea, with the aim of achieving “carbon neutrality” by 2050.
In addition to this “cross-border” project, more than one country has recently announced individual projects, as the UAE has become the first country in the Middle East to host the headquarters of the Global Institute for Carbon Capture and Storage, in Masdar City, the regional center for technological innovation, research and development in Abu Dhabi.
Carbon sequestration projects are seen by experts as an essential tool for achieving so-called “climate neutrality”, which means that any emissions from burning fossil fuels must be matched by measures to absorb carbon dioxide.
But investments in these projects must go hand in hand with investment in renewable energy sources, says Dr. Magdi Allam, Secretary General of the Union of Arab Environmental Experts.
Allam told Al-Ain News that achieving carbon neutrality requires a full set of solutions, including carbon sequestration, but these solutions must also include renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and the increased deployment of hydrogen technologies.
In contrast to the balance between solutions, which Allam demands, a recent report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEFA), in Canada, identified some obstacles from carbon sequestration projects, which made researchers describe it as an impractical solution.
According to the report, the captured carbon dioxide will need to be monitored for centuries to ensure that it does not escape into the atmosphere, and these technologies need huge costs that companies may not be able to afford.
“Although there is some evidence of the role of this technology in some sectors that are difficult to mitigate emissions such as cement, fertilizers and steel, the overall results indicate a financial and technical framework that continues to underperform,” the report said.
Another challenge is that the capture of carbon reused in oil extraction, a technology known as enhanced oil recovery, has accounted for about 73% of the carbon dioxide sequestered globally in recent years.
The report said that about 28 million tons of the 39 million tons sequestered globally, are re-pumped and isolated into oil fields to extract more oil.
The report added that EOR itself leads to direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions.
For other industries, which do not use carbon directly and resort to storing it, the biggest challenge for them, according to the report, is finding suitable storage sites for carbon sequestration.
As a result of these challenges, the report found that out of the 13 projects examined during the preparation of the report, 7 were found to have underperformed, two projects failed, and one project stopped.